Religious rights in china

In 1996, a tiny village with a huge Gothic-style church in China's Catholic heartland of northern Hebei province was the scene of a tense stand-off between the ruling Communist Party and the faithful. Authorities surrounded Donglu village's Our Lady of China Catholic Church, blocking thousands of pilgrims and detaining Vatican-ordained Bishop Su Zhimin, who was a member of the "underground" Church, not the state-backed official Church which did not recognize the pope's authority to name bishops. Despite repeated appeals to Chinese authorities from Vatican officials and underground clergy, it is unclear whether Su, who would now be 86, is still being held or is even alive. Decades on, the Donglu church's ties with officials are now convivial, according to Diao Ligang, a local priest, reflecting a generational shift towards acceptance of the ruling Communist Party's authority over China's Catholics. "Before, it was as if they kept wanting to see what we were hiding in our fist," said … [Read more...] about In China’s Catholic heartland, Vatican deal brings Communist Party closer

ALMATY, Kazakhstan: When he looks back on his youth in China's far-west Xinjiang region, Akikat Kaliolla, an ethnic Kazakh, recalls the place's natural beauty and the big, colourful weddings typical of his majority-Muslim community.But now Emin County where he grew up is a sealed-off pocket in a region experiencing a security crackdown against what Beijing calls separatist elements.Over a million people are allegedly being held in a secretive network of extra-judicial, political re-education centres, according to a United Nations panel of experts.In an interview with AFP in Kazakhstan, Kaliolla, a 34-year-old national, said this year he'd lost contact with his mother, father and two younger brothers, who he believes were interned in one of the camps."What they are doing to people there, especially to my parents, is illegal," the professional musician said, during the interview in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty."They are not livestock but people with rights. Both of my parents are … [Read more...] about Kazakh families torn apart in China’s Xinjiang crackdown

BEIJING: The Turkic mostly Muslim Uighur minority in China’s Xinjiang region face arbitrary detentions, daily restrictions on religious practice and "forced political indoctrination" in a mass security crackdown, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.The United Nations human rights panel said in August that China is believed to be holding up to 1 million ethnic Uighurs in a secretive system of "internment camps" in Xinjiang, in China's far west, where they undergo political education.Beijing has denied that such camps are for "political education" and says they are instead vocational training centres, part of government initiatives to bolster economic growth and social mobility in the region.China has said that Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between Uighurs who call the region home and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.Uighurs and other Muslims held in the camps are forbidden from using Islamic greetings, … [Read more...] about Muslim minority in China’s Xinjiang face ‘political indoctrination’

BEIJING: Arrests skyrocketed by more than 730 percent last year in China's far-western Xinjiang as the government ramped up a security crackdown in the traditionally Muslim region, activists said on Wednesday (Jul 25).The ruling Communist Party has justified increasingly tight policing of Xinjiang by saying it faces a threat from Islamic extremism and separatism, but many Muslims in the region accuse Beijing of religious and cultural repression.Authorities in Xinjiang arrested nearly 228,000 people on criminal charges in 2017, according to data compiled from official government sources by rights group China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).That's around 21 per cent of all arrests in China last year, the group said, even though the sparsely populated region has only around 1.5 per cent of China's nearly 1.4 billion population.The dramatic increase in arrests followed the introduction of draconian new restrictions on religious practices in Xinjiang, where about half the population of around … [Read more...] about Arrests skyrocketed in China’s Muslim far west in 2017

BEIJING: Tens of thousands of people have been detained in China's troubled far-western region of Xinjiang, a senior U.S. State Department diplomat said on Wednesday, amid a deepening crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China.Laura Stone, the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told reporters in Beijing that the mass detentions in so-called political re-education centres "paints a disturbing picture" and called on Chinese authorities to have a "more transparent and accountable system"."We are troubled by the Chinese efforts to clamp down on the legitimate rights of Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang," she said. "We will continue to raise our concerns with the Chinese government and call for legitimate due process in the detention of its citizens".She said the scarcity of information coming out of Xinjiang made it hard to derive authoritative numbers of those detained but that it was "at the very least in the tens of thousands".Local … [Read more...] about Tens of thousands detained in China’s Xinjiang, US diplomat says